Page "Japanese yen" Paragraph 4

In the 19th century silver Spanish dollar coins were common throughout Southeast Asia, the China coast, and Japan.

These coins had been introduced through Manila over a period of two hundred and fifty years, arriving on ships from Acapulco in Mexico.

These ships were known as the Manila galleons.

Until the 19th century these silver dollar coins were actual Spanish dollars minted in the new world, mostly at Mexico City.

But from the 1840s they were increasingly replaced by silver dollars of the new Latin American republics.

In the latter half of the 19th century some local coins in the region were made in the likeness of the Mexican peso.

The first of these local silver coins was the Hong Kong silver dollar coin that was minted in Hong Kong between the years 1866 and 1868.

The Chinese were slow to accept unfamiliar coinage and preferred the familiar Mexican dollars, and so the Hong Kong government ceased minting these coins and sold the mint machinery to Japan.